Pepe Escobar: Obama's Persian double

If current Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad remains a mirror image of the departed George W Bush, Khatami could not be a more fitting mirror image of Obama. Within the complex parameters of the Iranian system, he is a reformist able to reach out to conservatives and wildly popular among women, the young and progressives of all stripes. He's running for president in the June elections - and he's got what it takes to give Ahmadinejad a run for his rials. Khatami is fluent in German and an avid reader of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School of critical theory masters (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer). He is a former minister of culture (1989-1992) and was elected president
in 1997 with a landslide 70% of the vote, with women and young people overwhelmingly behind him, and re-elected in 2001. He was also the man who called for a "dialogue of civilizations". The Bush administration snubbed him - as it was entangled in the failed, Huntingtonian thesis of the "clash of civilizations". Years later, one day before the 5th anniversary of September 11, 2001, Khatami delivered a landmark speech at Harvard - the temple where Samuel Huntington was a professor. Khatami preferred to fight missiles with words. He presented his concept to an array of global forums, including the UN, which even declared 2001 - of all years - the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. US corporate media did not even bother to debate what Khatami had to say to Harvard.